I AM CAUGHT BEHIND THE FORMER IRON CURTAIN, AND MY POSTS CAN'T GET OUT.

I'LL TRY AGAIN NEXT WEEK FROM FRANCE.

SORRY 'BOUT THAT

Are People Really That Stupid?Fortunately, the answer to the above question is usually "No." However, people do enough fairly-stupid to seriously-stupid things to keep the rest of us entertained most of the time. Unfortunately, the human race is in the middle of doing a couple of really stupid things that may result in wiping ourselves off the face of the planet. Given this scenario, the blogger might be forgiven if the subjects he covers range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Feel free to join in. Maybe you'll say something smart.

My dog has a problem with skateboarders. He was out walking with my wife one day and a skateboarder came around a corner suddenly and startled him. Now every time he sees someone on a skateboard he goes spare. For a dog, that’s reasonable behaviour. It’s a nasty, frightening world, and anything that is unexplainable is threatening. I keep telling him he’s an idiot, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference. Yelling at him for it would just increase his anxiety, and make the condition worse. His good buddy, the neighbor’s two-year-old, came by on a scooter the other day, and he really didn’t know how to react. A real doggy quandary.

Fear of the Unknown

The fear of “other” is a survival trait in humans as well, and often leads to less humorous consequences. Twenty thousand years ago, Stone Age humans found the world a nasty, frightening and unexplainable place. They only felt safe in familiar situations, and that included people they were familiar with. Anyone not of the tribe was an enemy, and should be treated as such. Reasonable behaviour in the circumstances; there wasn’t a policeman around the corner you could call if the stranger turned out to be an enemy. Sure, if you were wrong about a stranger’s evil intentions it could be embarrassing. But if you were right and ignored it, you could be dead. In the absence of information to the contrary, playing safe is, well, safe.

Ignorant creatures that find their world frightening tend to react strongly to anything that is different from themselves. It keeps them alive.

If we continue to believe the “irrational” part of this definition, we will find difficult to deal with those who feel threatened by other, innocent people. Threatened enough to be angry and attack those people. If we really want to cure those suffering from this affliction, we have to try to understand the condition we are dealing with. Is it possible that the fear isn’t so irrational? In our relatively safe society, do these people have a reason to feel threatened by those who are different?

Case Study (Sort of)

I once had a homophobia problem in a high school drama class. A certain level of homophobia is pretty much a given in high schools, but this situation was notable because one of the male students “came out” to the class. It was a traumatic situation for him, but for myself and many of the students in the class it was sort of a “Yes. And…?” moment. His orientation had been pretty obvious to most of us all year, and in the accepting, creative atmosphere I had been working on in the class, it mostly didn’t matter.

However, for a few of the guys, having the situation stated out loud was difficult, and they reacted in typical teenage male fashion. This created a lot of tension, and threatened to destroy all our success in overcoming the usual divisive tensions that exist in the typical pubescent group. It is rather hard to create an open, accepting, and creative atmosphere in a class where someone is likely to call his acting partner a fag.

Finally I sat the class down and explained to them that the reason some straight guys had a problem with gay guys was that they were uncertain of their own sexuality. If you aren’t sure that you’re the stud you pretend to be, the gay guy is a threat because he might try to seduce you, and what if he succeeds? People who are confident in their sexuality can handle all sorts, because they don’t feel threatened.

I didn’t say it, but the implied conclusion was that if you hassled the gay guy, it meant that you weren’t sure about yourself. Not a clinically proven theory, but it struck home with high school students. It gave them a rational handle for their fear, plus social motivation to conquer it. The atmosphere in the class improved measurably.

This, of course, extends to all types. Truly confident people can get along with everyone, because differences don’t threaten them. Expressing homophobia reveals weakness, admits fear. Not very macho, when you look at it that way.

Bullying

The other half of the homophobic problem is that it often takes the form of a bullying incident. Once the perpetrators start their attack, the rest of the bystanders fade back, hoping not to be noticed, because that might make them the target of the next attack. The bullies take this silence to mean consent for their actions, and the victims feel likewise.

Social Pressure

If perpetrators noticed that whenever they started their homophobic games the reaction of their audience was going to be, “Oooh. A little worried about our maleness, are we?” they would realize that there was no support from the rest of us for their obnoxious ideas. Maybe someday when they grew up they might even think what that meant. Unfortunately, homophobia is not restricted to teenagers, and I don’t think you’re going to make much progress trying to re-educate a fifty-year-old gay basher. Nor are you going to beat it out of him, because that just increases his fear. Only the steady pressure of public opinion will keep his nastiness in the closet where it belongs.

The Wrong Solution

The problem this interpretation raises with the “International Day Against Homophobia” is the “Against” part. If you are trying to solve a situation caused by a frightened person, then waging a campaign against that person is hardly going to help him deal with his problem. It ranks just behind “Zero Tolerance for Bullies” and the “War on Drugs” as an aggressive reaction to a problem that needs an empathetic solution. Just like yelling at your dog for being afraid, it’s not going to work.

Understanding the nature of the problem and helping those who have the condition to understand it themselves is going to have much better chance of success. We need to reach the point where the vast majority of society believes that homosexuality is natural, and that homophobes are the aberrations. Then we can help them deal with their condition.

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Gordon A. Long is a semi-retired teacher living in
Delta, British Columbia. There he indulges his life-long interests in writing,
theater, photography, travel, dogs, and sailing (not necessarily in that
order).

He also runs Airborn Press and helps beginning writers with
editing, proofreading, designing, publishing and marketing their books. His
business experience includes providing technical and management services in the
theatrical and convention field for forty years, from school and amateur
theatre all the way up to the 2010 Olympics.

Has he invested in the Stock Market? Yes. Was he successful? Yes. Did he
make a killing? Not a chance. He isn't that smart. Or that stupid.